Kyle Busch added to his record-setting NASCAR season by winning the Nationwide Series race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana on Saturday night.
It was the seventh Nationwide Series win of the year and the 18th NASCAR win for Busch.
Carl Edwards finished second, but the only driver who had a car that could catch Busch at Fontana was Brian Vickers. Before the first pit stops, Vickers had a faster car than Busch, but Vickers had to drive through traffic to catch Busch, who started from the pole.
Vickers worked his way into second place, then ran into a series of mishaps.
He had a loose lug nut after the first pit stop and was called back into the pits. He lost valuable track position having to make a second pit stop to tighten the lug nut.
Then he hit the wall on lap 57 and fell back midway through the race.
As the race winded down, Vickers worked his way back to the front and finished third, behind Busch and Edwards.
“We fought traffic all night,” Vickers said. “Just ran out of time really, more than anything. We definitely could have at least given him a race.”

The Sporting News is reporting that Darian Grubb from Hendrick Motorsports will be Tony Stewart’s crew chief next year at Stewart’s new NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team.
Stewart said he will introduce his crew chief at Richmond International Raceway on Friday.
Grubb, who subbed as crew chief for Jimmie Johnson’s team and won the Daytona 500 in 2006, was the crew chief for Casey Mears’ No. 5 team in 2007. Grubb is the coordinator of on-track engineering for Hendrick Motorsports.

Dave Blaney had the fastest car in the afternoon practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.
His top lap was at 176.199 mph, almost 2 mph better than the second fastest driver.
“Practice went real well,” said Blaney, driver of the No. 22 Toyota for Bill Davis Racing. “Actually the whole weekend is going well. We felt we ran well in every practice. We made a pretty good qualifying lap. It’s going well, it’s been good.”
Jeff Gordon was second fastest at 174.571 mph. Jimmie Johnson, the pole winner for Sunday’s Pepsi 500, was third fastest at 174.448 mph.
A.J. Allmendinger, who will start on the front row with Johnson, was fifth fastest in practice at 174.364 mph.
“We’re definitely strong,” said Allmendinger, driver of the No. 84 Toyota for Red Bull Racing. “I think to be great we need a little bit more, but we’re in the ballpark.”
Riverside’s David Gilliland had a top 10 car in practice. He was ninth quickest at 174.039 mph.

Carl Edwards, the hottest driver in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, and Jimmie Johnson, who won last year’s Labor Day Cup race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, were the two fastest drivers in the first practice on Saturday at the track.
Edwards had a top lap at 177.958 mph. Johnson, the pole winner for the race, had a top lap at 177.117 mph.
A couple surprises in the top 10 in practice were David Ragan and Brian Vickers.
Ragan had the fourth fastest lap and Vickers had the sixth fastest.
The cars and drivers will return to the track for a final practice session at 5:20 p.m.

Kyle Busch won the pole for the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.
It was the 14th pole of his Nationwide Series career and his third Nationwide pole this year.
Jeff Burton will start second. It is his eighth top 10 Nationwide Series start of the year and his fifth in 10 races at Fontana.
Busch and Burton are also in the Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday.
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 20 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, qualified third for the Nationwide Series race. It is his first top 10 start at Fontana and his ninth top 10 start in 11 Nationwide Series this year. He was the highest qualifying driver who is not a regular on the Cup Series.
The Nationwide Series race starts at 7 p.m.

Jeff Gordon has not won a NASCAR Spint Cup Series race in 2008. The Hendrick Motorsports drivers have combined to win three Cup races this year. This from a team that won half, 18, of the Cup races last year.
He has won four Cup races at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana in his career, but his last came in 2004. Gordon’s last win in any Cup race came on Oct. 13 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in North Carolina.
“It’s been a little bit frustrating and disappointing,” Gordon said. “We want to win. We want to be competitive. We came off such a great year last year. Our team has been phenomenal this year, we just haven’t had the runs, haven’t had the cars and when we did have the cars haven’t been able to put it all together. So that’s definitely been frustrating.”
He’s one of five drivers in Chase contention without a win. Gordon is ninth in the Sprint Cup Series standings with nine top-five finishes. Gordon said it’s more important to put up consistent finishes than win races.
“A victory all that does is calm the media down,” Gordon said. “That’s all that does. A win is just to try to keep our streak going and those type of things. To me it’s not about a win, it’s about consistently running up front, leading laps. This is a perfect example, this race track. When we lead a lap here we’re usually in the top-five. That’s fairly typical for us so it’s about being competitive enough to get up there and lead laps. When we lead laps we do very well.”
Gordon qualified third for Sunday’s Pepsi 500.

Jeff Burton will make his 500th career Cup start Sunday at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. His Richard Childress Racing teammates, Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer, Childress, former driver and ESPN analyst Dale Jarrett and others attempted to roast him Saturday morning at the track.
About the best story to come out of the whole episode was that Burton has a strange attachment to shoes.
He wears the same pair from Daytona to Homestead during the NASCAR season. And that’s not just for racing. His everyday shoes are apparently the same ones he had for the Daytona 500 and he said he will keep wearing them until the season finale at Homestead in November.
Knowing Burton’s fondness for his shoes, Harvick said he and Bowyer played a little prank on Burton earlier in the year. They stole his shoes, tried to frame Matt Kenseth for it and put them up for auction on e-Bay. Burton didn’t appreciate it too much, but Harvick said there was never any danger of someone actually buying the shoes on e-Bay.
Burton did, however, blame his midseason slump on not having his shoes.

Apparently Dale Earnhardt Jr. was supposed to visit the set of “The Office,” but instead met a friend at the DirecTV offices. He ended up having what he called a “discussion” with his friend about the way DirecTV designs its remote controls.
“I think they should change it,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Do y’all have DirecTV? You know where the numbers are at the bottom of the remote, and you have to hold it kind of funny and it’s very uncomfortable and awkward? And when you hold a normal remote, you want the numbers up in the middle.”
Earnhardt Jr. prefers the numbers on his remote controls to be in a certain spot. The DirecTV remotes do not meet his high standards.
“It’s a travesty,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It is. You change the channel by the numbers and everybody goes to the numbers. They put them down at the bottom and my thumb can’t get down there and I drop the remote a lot. It’s terrible.”

A.J. Allmendinger will start Sunday’s Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway on the front row, next to pole winner Jimmie Johnson. It will be the best Cup start of Allmendinger’s career.
Allmendinger’s car is 36th in the Cup owners standings and the top 35 cars earn automatic qualifying spots for races. There were 44 cars that attempted to qualify for the Pepsi 500, meaning one car outside the top 35 was going home.
“I’m going to talk to Jimmie,” said Allmendinger, driver of the No. 84 Toyota for Red Bull Racing. “I think he said he’s going to let me lead the first lap for the five points — I need them — he doesn’t.”
Johnson, who was sitting in the media room in the garage area of the track, looked a little surprised by Allmendinger’s statement.
Drivers get five bonus points for leading a lap and five more points for leading the most laps. Allmendinger is 14 points behind the No. 77 car driven by Sam Hornish Jr. in 35th place.
“We have a lot of work to do still,” Allmendinger said. “Our focus is to have a good solid day like we’ve been trying for the last two months and get back in the top 35. We had a taste of it but the last two weeks of it have been disappointing and hopefully this is a good kick start to Sunday.”

Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, spent Thursday volunteering at the L.A. Regional Foodbank. He packed boxes of food and his team donated a Toyota Prius to the Foodbank.
“It was really special to go out there and I think we prepared 1,200 meals Thursday afternoon for the food bank to underprivileged persons,” Hamlin said Friday at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. “We were able to give away a Toyota Prius for the third time this year. We did one in Boston, one in Indianapolis and one here in L.A. For gas prices going up as much as they are, it was good to giveaway a hybrid vehicle to help deliver all these packages. FedEx delivers every day and those guys deliver everyday and we’re just trying to help them the best we can to get all those packages and meals out. It was definitely a great experience to see that. The L.A. food bank does so much for their community that we felt like they deserve to get something back. By donating that Toyota Prius it was an honor for us.”